Hurricane Neki

If you've been following Hurricane Neki, you might have noticed it's supposed to get very close to French Frigate Shoals. The island was evacuated by a Coast Guard C-130 today, so Ty, all 4 volunteers, and all 5 construction workers are safe and sound in Honolulu.
Once the hurricane passes, the Coast Guard will fly over and survey any damage. So we'll have to wait and see, but at least everyone's fine.

Here's a link to the video of the Coast Guard plane landing on Tern.

http://cgvi.uscg.mil/media/main.php?g2_itemId=687665

Last blog for a while

As always, it was another busy week. On Wednesday, we had some visitors stop in from the office in Honolulu and the from the Regional Office. They hopped on the Kahana at Midway so they could see how things are going on Laysan, French Frigate Shoals, and Nihoa. After a tour of Tern Island, Ty and I got lunch on the Kahana, then took the group to East Island and snorkeling at LaPerouse Pinnacle. It's always good to give people a look underwater, since the atoll has only about 67 acres of land and 232,000 acres of coral reef. Sarah (volunteer) left on the Kahana too so now we have 4 volunteers to take care of business until Dec.

We had a plane on Friday. Another 10 minutes and we wouldn't have. It started pouring rain just after it landed. I'm sure they would have had to turn around like last week since the visibility would have been too bad. We don't have a full service airport here so pilots have to fly on visual flight rules. It's tough to land if you can't see the island. The runway got covered in water, but thanks to our high tech water removal equipment (the volunteers and a bunch of brooms), most of the water was swept off of the main takeoff path.

If all goes well, I'll be out on the plane tomorrow (Monday). On my time off, I'll be doing some first aid training in Bend, OR, working in the office in Honolulu, and hanging out in Cleveland, and whatever else looks good while I'm gone. I may or may not make any vacation posts, we'll see if there's anything interesting in the rest of the world. If not, then I'll probably post when I get back here in Dec. See ya!

This is Round Island. It comes and goes. I hope it stays around long enough for this pup to wean. You can see Tern Island on the horizon. I wish I could bring my nice camera in the boat, but I'm not taking the chance on it getting wet. This is about as good of a zoom as I can get with my little waterproof Olympus.

These are "Nenue". That's the Hawaiian name for various species of chubs, which all look very similar, so we'll stick with nenue. They are very common around here and every now and then we'll see a yellow one in a school of gray ones.

Here is a bluefin trevally swimming below me. They usually follow seals around to see if they scare up any food. They also follow people around, until they see that we aren't doing anything interesting. They are fairly big and get up to 25 pounds. The giant trevally, which also follow seals and people, get a lot bigger, about 5 ft and 150 lbs. My pictures weren't as good of those guys this time.

This is a blue-grey noddy on LaPerouse Pinnacle. It's a bit fuzzy since I had to zoom in a lot on the computer, otherwise it would have just looked like another guano spot.

This is what our warehouse looks like with no walls. It's probably a little more interesting for people who've been out here before. It should be all fixed up by the time I get back.

This is the runway today. It looks a little better than it did a couple of months ago.

New volunteers and rain

I got the new helpers on Monday. I'm glad that Adam and Sarah are still around to help show them the ropes. Ty is catching on quick for all the "acting manager" jobs that he'll have around here while I'm at training and on vacation. He says it reminds him of working on a ranch, with all the cooking, cleaning, and other chores that everyone has to pitch in on. He also said, "You have a really cool job". I know.
We finally got some rain. The problem is that it came the day the plane was bringing more construction workers. They got here and the visibility was terrible and there were big lakes on the runway. They flew over, took a look, then flew back to Honolulu. It rained again the next night, so we got up early and took brooms and spread all of the puddles around to dry them out. It was a pretty big job to get that done. It ended up being pretty dry so at least the plane could land on Wednesday. It was a bit muddy though. I'm hoping it doesn't rain on the 21st, since that's when I'm supposed to be flying off.
I finally got a Sunday off today, so I went snorkeling with the new people, went for a run, and watched "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels". So absolutely no work today. The construction guys worked a half day, and were glad they could get finally get off the hot roof for a bit.

Here comes some of our supplies and new volunteers. The Kahana is in the background.

I'm training Ty on how to get through the little channels to get to the other islands. We took our lunch along and ate it on Trig Island. I think we need one palm tree on this island. I believe some introductions are in order; Sarah, Erika, Alex, Ty, Adam, and Katie are in the picture.

Here is one of two Bristle-thighed curlews that are visiting right now. They usually prefer the other atolls for some reason. They nest in Alaska and take their winters on islands and atolls throughout the pacific. Last I heard there's only about 7,000 of them in the world.

This is the other curlew that's here. I'm glad it got this grasshopper. It's invasive and we're trying to get rid of them. It was interesting to watch the bird try to kill the grasshopper before it could eat it. It would shake it up to stun it, then slam it on the ground, and catch it again before it could get away. These grasshoppers are tough, this one is about 4" long and even a stomp with the old shoe usually doesn't phase them. These birds will also eat other birds eggs, which they crack open by hitting them with rocks.

Here's another uncommon shorebird I haven't shown you before. The little light colored bird is a sanderling. The other 4 are ruddy turnstones. The turnstones are always around but there are only a couple of sanderlings here each season.

Happy Labor Day

It's another working weekend for us on Tern Island. We had a plane today, which brought a runway inspector and John and Josh, who'll be working on the warehouse. They came today so that they can help unload the Kahana tomorrow. It's bringing the rest of the construction materials, plus 3 new volunteers and Ty, who'll be taking care of things out here while I'm gone. He usually takes care of Tern Island from Honolulu, so now he gets some hands on experience. We are losing 2 volunteers, Whitney gets to take the Kahana to Midway and fly back from there, and Therese will fly back to Honolulu from here in a few days. Sarah will stay to help train the new volunteers and take the Kahana back, and Adam will stay out here a while longer.
We'll have another plane the day after tomorrow with a few more construction workers. So we're well on our way to the 14 that'll be here when I leave. Things are really busy around here, but it feels good to see some results.


The plane is taking off for Honolulu.

Since I talked about the nice view I had while running my 10k's, I thought I'd show you. This picture shows the nice blue water, but it also makes it look like a desert island with all the dead vegetation. It has been really dry out here lately, but still beautiful.

Sarah and Whitney were watching the seal crew do their work. The sooty tern was just looking for a good spot for..... whatever they use their spots for?

This brown noddy chick is only a couple of days old and wandered out into the middle of the runway. Either that or a frigatebird dropped it before it could eat it (more likely). I put it off to the side, near the most likely parents, but its chances aren't good.

I haven't shown you a baby turtle for a few weeks. Here's one that we let go early in the morning and is almost home.

New Manager

OK, it's supposed to be official as of today that I am the new manager of Tern Island. I was only "acting" manager up until now. I had to be here a year before I was eligible for the increase in grade. It won't change anything, but I'll at least get a raise.

We've been busy, as usual, out here. This time we've been clearing out the warehouse so the construction work can start in a week or so. It's really difficult to find other places to store all that, since that's why we have the warehouse in the first place. They should be done with it by late Nov, so I'll just have to keep things cluttered until then.

I've still had time to continue with my jogging. I decided 5k wasn't enough excercise though, so I bumped it up to 10k. Now that's enough excercise, at least for the time being. That's 5 laps around the runway. The scenery is great, so it doesn't get old. And some of the meaner birds like to try to peck my head at certain spots on the loop. It keeps me paying attention at least.

We'll be starting our flights this weekend. Many of the sooty terns have gone and I hope even more leave by the weekend so none of them get hit. The Kahana will be coming up on Labor day to bring the rest of the construction gear and 3 new volunteers. Ty will also be coming out from Honolulu to act as manager while I get my time off the island in Oct/Nov. So there's only one more week of 5 people, then by next week, we'll be back up to about 13 people. It makes cooking night a little harder, but other than that, it should be alright.

I took a little time this week to go out with Whitney and band some Bulwer's petrel chicks. We have these nest boxes for them since it hard for them to dig burrows with all the coral chunks everywhere. They use them quite a bit. Here, there are 3 chicks out of 4 nest boxes.

There was another nice sunset this evening.

This red-footed booby was just watching me work on the tractor.

This is one of my favorite little fish. It's a Hawaiian cleaner wrasse. They have little cleaning stations where bigger fish come to get cleaned. This picture is a little blurry, but I've been trying to get a picture of one forever, so this is as good as it gets.

Tern Island - Population: 5

I thought being on a little island out in the middle of the ocean meant kicking back, reading some books and watching the wildlife. Not quite, apparently. We had 2 more ships this week. Really, they were the same 2 as last week, but instead of big offloads, we had big onloads. The Sette came through on Thursday and picked up the seal crew and all of their stuff. They also picked up the 6 seal pups that they tagged last week. I got an email from them saying that they let them go at Nihoa and everything is good with them. I hope they make it. We had one pup that just weaned that didn't make it. It was attacked by a shark a couple of days ago, but finally died yesterday, probably from infection.

The Kahana came today to pick up all of our trash and recycling from the last 5 months. Elizabeth also went aboard and is headed back to Honolulu. We are now down to the usual island poplulation of 5. Four volunteers and me. It's more cooking nights, entrapment walks, and cleaning duties for each of us, but it's kind of nice to have it so low key. All of the people who come out here are great, but it's just nice to have it slow down sometimes. When the construction on the warehouse starts in a few weeks, we'll be back up to 15 again. So I'm enjoying it while I can.

We're getting all of our trash into pallet tubs to put on the Kahana this morning.

We're bringing out a boatload of gear to the Sette.

A young brown booby was checking out our propellers as we waited to pull up to the Sette.

This is a brown noddy with its albino chick. It can fly now, but the parent still feeds it. Like I've told you before about albinos, seabirds don't usually make it to adulthood. There are a lot of factors working against them like bad eyesight, sun damage, being picked on, more obvious to predators, etc.

Just a gecko on the window.

More Groceries

It's been a very busy week with 2 ships and people coming and going. We offloaded the ship all day Saturday and had a couple of loads on Sunday morning, but we've got everything we need and we're back up to "good" on the food supply. And more importantly, we're good on the TP now too.

No one left on the Kahana today, but Elizabeth came on island to work on our emergency planning and supplies. She'll catch the Kahana on its way back from Midway to get back to Honolulu.

The volunteers have been working extra hard, so after the ship left this morning, I took them out for a reef survey where we snorkel around and look for entanglement hazards. We only found one net, but saw a lot of nice coral and fish. We also watched "Jaws" two nights ago. I remember when I first saw that as a kid. I was even scared to jump into the deep end of a pool for a couple of years. The one white-tip shark I saw today didn't worry me, but I think I'll wait on letting new volunteers watch it until after they've seen a few sharks. Along those lines, I think it's probably good that we don't have a copy of "The Birds" on island.

This is the landing craft from the Kahana bringing our food and construction materials.

A few of us took a break after work a couple days ago to go jump in the ocean.

This seal is going to be relocated to Nihoa where it will have a better chance of surviving than here. It's got a satellite tracker on it's back so it can be monitored. If no one is around to remove the device, it will just fall off when the seal molts.

Whitney is swimming through a school of little fish.

Here's Therese and Mark swimming around a nice bunch of coral.

Food and Mail

The NOAA ship Oscar Elton Sette stopped by today and brought us some food. Even though Sunday is "fend for yourself" day when it comes to food, we decided it should be a big salad night, since everyone was probably going to have one anyway. I'm not really that big of a salad person, but I must say, it was pretty good. At least we've finally got more ingredients than pasta and beans (a slight exaggeration, but barely). It was great to get the mail today too. It's been a few months since our last mail. Thanks for the package, Dasha! The Kahana is also coming later this week to bring us even more food and supplies, so as usual it's either feast or famine around here.

We now have 2 fewer people on island. Jon, Austin, and Mike (shark catchers) left to catch the plane at Midway next week. Derek and Monica (monk seal biologists) also left to go to Laysan to do some seal work there for a week or so. We got 3 new visitors too. Charles, Bob, and Tenaya are here to also work with monk seals. They are going to relocate 6 weaned pups to Nihoa, where pups have a higher survival rate than French Frigate Shoals. A pup just got bit by a shark this week, the morning after it's mother left. This one had one of it's rear flippers bitten off, so it probably won't make it since even the perfectly healthy ones have a tough time. We were bummed that it was a pretty healthy female, since the population needs females more than males at this point. I hope the seals do well on Nihoa. They'll be satellite tagged so that NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) can keep track of them for a little while at least.

Therese and Whitney are banding a Christmas shearwater chick. These are some of the best mannered birds on the island. They don't try to bite while they are being banded.

This Laysan albatross chick was just watching the waves smash the seawall a few inches in front of it. There are only a couple dozen left on the island now. All of the black-footed albatross are gone.

One more baby turtle picture for you. I sat by a nest a couple nights ago and waited for them to hatch out. I only had to sit there about 45 minutes until they decided it was time.

This is a bird I haven't shown you before. It looks just like a Great frigatebird, except for the white spots under its wing and it is a bit smaller. This is a Lesser frigatebird and they usually are found in the southern hemisphere.

Blogspot Finally Works Again (for now)

I can finally do my own blogs again. Thanks for putting them up for me all those weeks Dasha. It must have been some setting that they changed, because our internet service is a little bit worse than usual. Oh well, it's always going to be something.

We've been finding more and more turtle hatchlings that are crawling around the island instead of finding their way into the water. They usually crawl toward light and with a bright, high moon like it is now, they sometimes go for the middle of the island instead of the surf.

The seal pups that have weaned also have been scooting up all over the island too. The runway isn't a good spot for them, so we have to put them back on the beach. I think they learn fairly quickly that there isn't much for them up here anyway.

We're getting ready for a couple of ships in the next couple of weeks. Next Sunday, the Sette will come and get the shark guys and 2 of the seal crew. They'll be dropping off 3 more people to help with some seal work that I'll tell you about next time. They'll also be bringing about 15 boxes of groceries for us, so we're kind of looking forward to that. A few days later, the Kahana will be bringing a lot of supplies and some construction materials to fix the warehouse up. We'll finally be getting some mail too. The last time we had that was in June. I hope people sent me some goodies!!


A baby green sea turtle is trying to get into the water. I put it in a bucket though and we let it go after sunset, since there are fewer fish and birds to eat them at night.

There was a question last week on the tagging. So Buzz, here's what the seal tags look like. This one was on Midway. They just put it on the tail flippers. With the sharks, they implant a tracking tag and they also give it a dorsal fin tag so they immediately if they've caught it before. I don't have pictures of that though.

This is a bush near the barracks that the black noddies love to nest in.

This is just a picturesque bush near the beach.

The brown noddies nest on the ground or on roofs and the chicks are usually white or gray when they are small. The black noddies nest in the bushes and the chicks are always black, except for the front of their head.

More Baby Turtles

Dasha was away at hockey training last week so no one was around to publish my blog. Now that she's back, I'll catch you up on what we've been doing. Thank you Dasha!
In the last couple of weeks I got out on the boat a couple of times. I went to Trig island with the seal crew to go pick up a young pup that just weaned. We like to get them away from Trig as soon as the mom leaves them, mainly because of shark predation. This one already had a bite and it was only on its own for less than a day. It wasn't a really serious bite and seals are pretty good at healing, so it shouldn't die from that.
I also went on the boat with the shark tagging crew. I guess the sharks had better stuff to do than get tagged that day, because we didn't get a single one. Usually they at least catch some kind of shark, like sandbar sharks, or gray reef sharks even if they don't tag them. I saw one shark earlier today when I went snorkeling. It was a white tipped reef shark so it wasn't one that gets tagged either. I don't know where all the Galapagos and Tiger sharks went. If they stay away at least a few more albatross chicks might make it out of here.
It was nice to get out and snorkel today too. It's been a while since I've gone. I saw a bunch of green sea turtles swimming around and a monk seal came over to see what I was up to. The water was a bit cloudy, but I'm sure none of you feel sorry for me.
Mike and Austin are pulling in the shark line.

Here's a picture of them from a few weeks ago with a decent sized tiger shark. The seal crew happened to be passing by when they were tagging it. Thanks to Monica Bond for the picture. The sharks are usually pretty docile when they are flipped over on their backs.

It's time to start digging out hatched turtle nests. After the nest hatches, we give them a few days and then dig into the nest to make sure there are none stuck under big hunks of coral. Here you see Therese, Sarah, Whitney, and Adam with another 2 feet or so to go to get down to the nest.

There are a lot of nests hatching now, so between lost turtles on the runway and in the weeds, and digging out the stuck turtles, there are a lot to be saved.

I didn't get a picture of the seal today, but Derek Lee from the seal crew had this nice picture and said I could use it. So that's about what I was seeing except the water wasn't as clear today.

Baby Turtles

It was another beautiful week. Lots of sun and enough wind to keep it from getting too hot. We got enough rain to supply water for another half of a day. There hasn't been much out of the ordinary going on except that the turtle nests have started hatching. That means when we do our entrapment walks every morning, we have to look for confused baby turtles that crawled up toward the runway instead of down to the water. We collect them in buckets to get them out of the heat and wait until after sunset to let them go. They will die within a few hours of being in the direct sunlight if we don't pick them up. The adults are still nesting, so that means we'll have to be on the lookout for them for at least the next 3 months. Saving baby turtles is always a popular activity around here.

Here's the first 2 baby green sea turtles in the bucket. If they can escape from all the predators, they may be back to start breeding here sometime within the next 20-50 years.

This mom and pup monk seal are always right near the barracks building. We can take pictures of them through the window.

Here's another Great frigatebird picture. This is all the way at the east tip of the island looking west. I've shown a lot of frigatebirds lately, but this was a good shot of the whole island, so you get another one.

Adam, Sarah, Whitney, and Therese are looking for the Bulwer's petrel nests. I showed you what they look like last time. They like to nest in places like the broken concrete at the old Coast Guard dump. That bird in front of the camera is a sooty tern. Objects in lens may not be larger than they appear.

A Normal Week

It was a “normal” week on Tern Island. At least for us. The usual projects are still going on; seal monitoring, shark tagging, bird banding, and a lot of other smaller projects. We had an extra day off this week for the 4^th of July holiday. That was nice, but for most weeks, 2 days off is too much. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but we work 6 days a week here. Any more than one day off and people usually end up doing work projects anyway. Besides, there's really nowhere to go.

It's been fairly calm here this week, so we snorkeled on the outer side of the atoll. It's similar to the inside of the reef, but there's a lot more coral growing out there, and bigger schools of fish. I would show you a picture, but I had to send my little camera back for repair. The battery compartment won't register as closed, so it won't take any pictures. I also had other camera trouble. My lens for my nice camera went bad, (won't focus anymore). I had to send both off on the Sette with Dave, and he mailed them off. I hope I get them back when our next mail ship gets here in about 5 weeks. I still have my 100-300 mm zoom lens and an old 35-105 lens for my Canon. So I can still take some new pictures, and at least both things are still under warranty. I have enough pictures to keep showing new ones anyway, even if I couldn't take new ones for 5 more weeks.

Thanks for posting again, Dasha!

Here's a bird I haven't shown you before. It's a Bulwer's Petrel. It looks a lot like a Christmas Shearwater (which I've shown you), and a lot like a Tristram's Storm Petrel (which I haven't shown you). These birds are bigger than a Tristram's and smaller than a Christmas, but they all look pretty similar- nondescript, brown birds. Normally these birds live in holes or under things so you don't get pictures of them just sitting around in the daytime, but this little troublemaker was trying to nest under the tractor tire, so I have to keep putting him outside, until he finds somewhere better to nest. They have a weird call too. They sound like dogs off in the distance, “woof, woof, woof”.

Here's a fat little monk seal pup born this year. This little guy came swimming by while I was behind the seawall, so he couldn't see me. We always try to stay 150 ft from all of the seals, to minimize disturbance to them, but it would have been more of a disturbance for me to jump up and run away, than to sit and let it go by. This is one of the times that I was glad I still had my good zoom lens.

I haven't shown you a Gray-backed tern chick yet either. Here's one with its parent. They like to nest out in the open on the rubble.

Here's what that little chick will look like in a few more weeks. This one is almost ready to fly.

Another 50,000 reasons that we don't fly in April-August. For some reason, the sooty terns really like the runway.

A little bunch of Masked boobies are holding their ground on the runway. They like it there too, but there are not that many of them.

New Acting Manager

Well, I'm acting Refuge Manager for the time being now that the NOAA ship “Oscar Elton Sette” showed up on Thursday and picked up Dave, Jim, Irene, and Sheri. The ship is doing lobster research on this cruise, and since they were coming by anyway, they were nice enough to give those 4 a ride. They also gave us a little fresh fruit and some much needed coffee. We had about 3 weeks of coffee left and our next supply ship isn't for almost 6 weeks. Even if you don't have great math skills, you can see that that's not good. We're doing canned and frozen food for 6 more weeks, but some people get pretty creative on their cooking nights and make great dinners.
The volunteers are finally done banding the albatross chicks. I didn't count exactly how many there were, but over 3,100. Although some of them have died, since the most of the parents have stopped feeding them. It's up to them now to learn to fly and find their own food. The Masked and Red-footed boobies are next on the list for banding. They bite a lot harder than the albatross chicks, but at least their bills aren't quite as sharp. So more bruises, but fewer scars.
The weather is getting a little less windy here so Jon, Mike, and Austin (the shark crew) can finally get back to their tagging. Their project is to tag tiger, Galapagos, and blacktip sharks and monitor where they go. Shark predation is a major cause of death for monk seal pups here. They've already got a few this year, so the more they understand the sharks movements, the more they can figure out how to minimize the loss. Most of the other islands rarely lose pups to sharks. French Frigate Shoals is a good example of a “predator dominated ecosystem”. So far they've caught over 100 different sharks (some too small to tag, or a kind that doesn't really eat pups), but it hasn't slowed down anyone's snorkel trips. It seems they prefer seal pups and albatross chicks.
Thanks for posting Dasha!

Since I didn't talk about turtles this time, you at least get a picture of one. Here's a male green sea turtle swimming by while I was snorkeling.

We've been collecting a lot of marine debris lately. The seals love to play with this stuff and sometimes get stuck in it. Most of this is just from the last few weeks. Sometimes it washes up on this island, but the seal crew picks up a lot of it on their boat trips across the atoll.

I thought this was kind of funny. Here's two different species of birds (red-tailed tropicbird chick and sooty tern adult) both with eggs from red-footed boobies. I'm sure the tern has an egg of it's own to worry about and the chick just doesn't care that it's there.

A Greater frigatebird is perched on one of our plot markers with sooty terns flying over.

Another Nice Week

It's been a busy week once again with the usual things going on. The seals are having pups and keeping the seal crew hopping. The volunteers are still busy banding the 3000 or so albatross chicks, and we helped the turtle crew take down their camp on East Island, since they have to get all their gear cleaned and stowed by the time they leave (Wed. or Thur.). The shark guys have been taking a bit of time off because it's been pretty windy and choppy out in the atoll, and no one wants to fall in when they are tagging a 14 ½ ft tiger shark on their little 17 ft boat.
It's Dave's final week on the island too. He took a job at Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge so that will leave me in charge out here. It will probably take a while to get all the paperwork done to actually make me the manager, and it will take even longer to get another assistant manager out here. I hope a new asst. mgr can get out here faster than I did.
The maintenance volunteer, Jim, will be leaving on the Sette with Dave and the turtle crew, so there will be 4 fewer mouths to feed until the construction guys get out here this fall.Here are some Achilles Tangs for a bit of color. This is one of the Christmas shearwaters that we are monitoring. Here is the shark crew hoisting their boat onto their trailer. We don't use the boat ramp because it's too rough usually and the boat gets beat around too much. The hoist is easier. The young great frigatebirds are catching and eating small sooty tern chicks all the time. There are tens of thousands of chicks still around, but we still don't like to see them get eaten. The sharks are getting a lot of the black-footed albatross chicks too.Here's a sooty tern chick hiding under the Chenopodium. Of all the bird chicks on the island, the sooty and grayback tern chicks are the only ones that are scared of people. They are really the only ones that have predators here though. The frigatebirds leave the other chicks alone.

Seals, Turtles, and Sharks

Things are still busy on Tern and our internet is still not up to par, but thanks to Dasha, I'm getting another blog out this week. Besides the seal, turtle, and shark work going on, the Hi'ialakai (NOAA ship) is here doing their own things, such as more shark tagging, and some archaeological diving. The Hi'ialakai looks exactly the same as the Oscar Elton Sette, which I showed you before. They brought us a big supply of food, so it's nice to have them come through. The volunteers are still trying to get our almost 3,000 albatross chicks banded. They are about 2/3 done, so their getting their practice in. The bird noises are a little different than when I left. It used to be albatross and red-footed boobies making all the racket while I tried to go to sleep, but now it's sooty terns and wedge-tailed shearwaters. The shearwaters sound pretty weird. They have 2 basic noises. One sounds just like a ghost from cartoons, a rising and lowering “ooooooooooooooo”, got that? And the other noise they make sounds like a baby crying. It usually only takes about 1 night to get used to the new birds when they get here.

A couple of the Black-footed albatrosses have already fledged. This guy needs another month or so. The sharks are starting to patrol the islands pretty closely looking for chicks who got in the water thinking they were all ready to fly, but really aren't. Quite a few of them have already been eaten.
Irene is measuring a turtle. There are 2 turtle techs here right now, Irene and Shari, and they camp over on East island since that is where most of the nesting takes place. They work at night and count, and monitor all of the nesting turtles that are there. They take turns coming back to this island after 3 or 4 days each. I went over one night and checked out what they do. It was very interesting, since I didn't get to see much nesting activity over at Midway. Over 90% of the population of Hawaiian green sea turtles nest here at French Frigate Shoals. Here we are coming back to Tern on the boat. These are 3 of the volunteers, Whitney, Sarah, and Adam. The weather has been great lately for getting over to the other islands.
Here's Mark, one of the seal crew, snorkeling out at LaPerouse Pinnacle. It only looks about 6 feet tall here, but it's really 120 ft. And good news. We saw a few blue-gray noddies back on the rock. We hadn't seen any since the peregrine falcon came around. So it's good to see there are at least 3 of them around.
Here's a Red-footed booby stretching its wing.
The Red-footed booby chicks are getting big now. Only a couple had hatched when I left. This chick must have had a tiring day of squawking, since it's yawning now, and they really don't do much. The Great frigatebird chicks are pretty big now too. None of them had hatched when I left.

You're probably wondering why I haven't posted for a while, at least I hope you're wondering. It turns out that Google products do not work from the island anymore. Blogspot and Gmail are both out of commission here. So, I sent the text and my pictures to Dasha (my wife) and she's putting it up. Thanks Dasha! For those of you who were checking Mary's blog too, that's why she couldn't post either.
Anyway, I'm back on Tern island with 15 other people. It's pretty busy around here. There are 3 people tagging sharks to see where they go, 4 people monitoring and tagging monk seals, 2 people tagging nesting green sea turtles, 5 volunteers, and Dave and me. The good thing is that we are finally getting some of the food from 2003 eaten up. Today, I'll catch up on my ride back to Tern and show you some pictures of the other islands. They all look a lot alike. Low sand islands with no trees and a lot of birds.

Here we are unloading supplies on Green Island at Kure Atoll. Kure was also a Coast Guard station like Tern Island.

This is the old Coast Guard building. I got to spend the night here since I was helping set up.

The people at Kure will be staying in the tents since there's not enough room in the building.

The verbesina is almost as bad at Kure as it is at Midway.

This is Southeast island at Pearl & Hermes Atoll, aka Pearl & Hermes Reef.

This is a view completely across the island looking at the Oscar Elton Sette.

Here is the seal camp at Pearl & Hermes.

A population of Laysan finches was brought to Pearl & Hermes as a backup to the population on Laysan Island. They are very curious. About 50 of them came to check out the new supplies.

Some finches flew out to the ship and would not fly back to the island. We think that they were looking for fresh water, which was scarce on the island. We had to catch them, put them in this bucket, and have someone come out from the island in a boat to bring them back. The picture was taken through an air hole in the bucket lid.

This is Lisianski Island. See, most of these islands are similar, but you can tell them apart.

A monk seal watches us set up the tents on Lisianski for the seal monitoring crew that will be out here for the next couple of months.

Colleen and Angie sitting on the beach in front of their tents on Lisianski Island.

Technical Difficulties

Sorry, I can't blog from the island right now due to technical difficulties. I'll try to figure it out soon.

Back at Midway

I'm a little behind on my posting since I've been really busy lately, but now that I'm riding the ship, I've got my evenings free. It was really great to get back to Midway. Most of the people are the same, and there have been a few improvements, but overall it feels like I just went on a short vacation. The food was still great, the views were still great, and there were still a lot of birds. I was busy a lot of the time with computer training, but I got some time to go out on the boat with Cynthia Vanderlip (who normally lives on Kure Atoll) to do a dolphin survey. She was taking pictures of all of the dorsal fins of the dolphins for identification while I took GPS and depth measurements. We were out with the pods for a couple of hours so you'd think I'd get some really great pictures, but I only got a few decent ones. I also helped out with some plant work, and pulled a little verbesina for old time's sake. The island looks really good. Greg has some more help from the Thai guys (Sam & Moo) with spraying verbesina and they are almost keeping up. Really, things are so similar that I don't have much to say. It's pretty musch the same as I have on my "Pete at Midway" blog, but I'll put up a few pictures anyway.

Here's a ~10 ft tiger shark that we passed on the way to the dolphin survey. I put my small underwater camera over the side as we were going by. It didn't seem to mind.

See, there are still a lot of albatross chicks on Midway.

I got this picture the same way as the shark picture. That little Olympus is handy to have sometimes.

Here's one of the spinner dolphins jumping.

The mini-golf course is now open for business. We were working on this last spring.

The hydroponics greenhouse is up and running also, right now mostly for salad greens. The person running it got there the week before I left last year.

The cable houses are falling down pretty quickly now that there is absolutely no maintenance done on them right now.

I went snorkeling on Sunday morning and saw this little frogfish under the cargo pier.

Gary, John Klavitter, and Steve are extirpating the one cactus plant from the island.

The Laysan ducks had a bad year last year. Many of them died off due to botulism. The problem seems to have run its course and the ducks are doing well again. These ducks are getting snapped at by the albatross chick.

Here's a gratuitous white tern chick picture.

Here's my ride back to Tern. The "Oscar Elton Sette" is pulling up to the cargo pier. I'll either be back on the 19th or 20th after stops at Kure Atoll, Pearl & Hermes Reef, and Lisianski Island to drop off the monk seal crews.

Vacation Pics

Finally! Here's a few pictures of my time off of the island. They've got nothing to do with Tern Island, but it's something to look at. I should be on Midway next weekend, so I'll do my next entry from there.

Spring crocus in Cleveland.

The beach at Lake Erie is a little different than the beach on Tern Island.

I went to a couple of battlefields on my time off. This is at Antietam in Maryland.

This is a memorial at a battlefield in Czech Republic where Napoleon's army was defeated.

This sign is telling you that you are at the border of Czech Republic and Germany. The tree is in Germany.

This is Frauenkirche in Dresden, Germany. It was bombed in WWII and finally rebuilt a few years ago. The dark bricks are from the original church.

This is the view of Dresden from the top of Frauenkirche.

Random people on a sidewalk in Dresden.

Zwinger Palace in Dresden.

Zwinger Palace has a great art gallery in it.

This is the St. Wolfgang chapel near Krupka, Cz. Rep. This was built in 1700.

This church is in Most, Cz Rep. It was moved on rails 841 meters to make way for a coal mine. It was built in 1594.

We went on a few hikes. One place we went is called Milešovka and it's an old castle converted into a weather station.

We also hiked up a mountain called Bořeň. It was hazy the entire time I was in Cz. Rep.

This beautiful castle is called Karlstejn. They started building it in 1348.

View of Prague castle.

St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague castle.

Here's a view of the castle from the crowded Charles bridge.

Changing of the guard at Prague castle.

There was an Easter Market in the Old Town Square in Prague.

This is called Powder Tower because they used to store gunpowder there.

This is the national museum in Prague.

It was kind of odd to see these plastic penguins against the Prague backdrop.

We also went to a couple of soccer games in Dasha's hometown of Teplice.

These sculptures were in a town called Kutna Hora.

This is the Sedlec Ossuary where they have the bones of 40-70,000 people. Many were plague victims. A monk started arranging the bones and it's one of the weirdest places I've been. All of the decorations are human bones.

No Pics this time

I'm in Shepherdstown, West Virginia for training right now, so no real blog. But in the mean time, if you want to see what's up on Tern Island, you can check out Mary Gibson's blog. She writes a lot more than I do, and she's got a new perspective on things so it will be a lot more interesting reading than my blog is. Go back and start reading at her oldest post (it's only once a week, like mine) for seeing what it's like to come out to these islands for the first time. It's good!

welcometoternmaryg.blogspot.com

Back in Honolulu

I wasn't sure that I was going to do a blog this week from Honolulu, but I've got the time. The plane made it on schedule, and I gave the island back over to Dave. We also got a maintenance volunteer named Jim and Josh who'll be a short term volunteer to work with Melinda on her albatross tagging work as well as other stuff. I'll be really busy this week picking up the supplies for the island. I sure don't miss the traffic when I'm out on Tern. I miss the birds already. The tropicbird chicks are starting to come out now, and the boobies and frigatebirds will hatch while I'm gone too. I guess they'll make it without me though.

It looks like I might be going back to Midway in May on my way back to Tern. There will be some boat rescue training there that would be good for me to have on Tern. At the moment I'm scheduled to fly out with the Coast Guard on one of their C-130's (you can see a picture of it on my Midway blog). Then I would take the NOAA ship "Oscar Elton Sette" back to Tern (you can see that one on my Midway blog too). I'm hoping it will work out because I'd really like to get back there for a couple of weeks and see everyone. I'll try to post some pictures from my trip to the Czech Republic in April. It may be a few weeks before I post again.

Here's the volunteer group that's still out taking care of Tern. Cindy, Jim, Mary, and Melinda. They just came back from counting all the frigate bird eggs on the island. Thanks guys (and gals).

Here was my parting view of Tern island from the plane.

This is where I stay while I'm in Honolulu. There are 5 other people here at the moment, 1 budget person here on detail from D.C. (Hi Kathy!), and 4 new people for Laysan Island. A couple new Tern volunteers will be showing up this week also so the 7 beds in here will be full.

Bunkhouse living room.

Bunkhouse yard. There's a very busy street just past the fence.

The garage is getting full of supplies for both Laysan and Tern. The Kahana will be taking everyone in a couple of weeks.

Last Week

The plane was a few days late, but Jim, Cindy, and Mary made it out here. And Brie, Kelli, Kevin, and Sarah all made it back, and Melinda is still here. These 3 are a lot busier since they have to learn all the ropes and jump into things at full speed, but it will settle down a little on Thursday when 3 more people come. I'll be going back to Honolulu, but they'll still be +2 on the help.

I haven't got to do anything fun with this group yet either. The weather has been overcast and really windy. They'll get their chance though (I hope).

I'll be doing some training in West Virginia, then going back to Cleveland for a week and a half. Then my wife (Dasha) and I will be visiting her family in the Czech Republic for a couple weeks. I'll be back here in May. I'm not sure what dates yet, but I'll try to do an update when I get back from CZ.

Here's an out of focus black noddy. I almost deleted it, but decided it looked cool enough to keep.

I got a couple more pictures of the barracks. Here's the common room where we watch our TV series and movies. Right now we're doing the 3 seasons of "Arrested Development".

Here's one of the unoccupied bedrooms. It's got a great ocean view, but that's too hard to get a good exposure. Nothing fancy, but it works. People usually find some sort of decorations out on the beach.

Here's a the baby red-footed booby that I showed you last week. Now it's about 3 1/2 weeks old. It's on the ground because it's nest disintegrated. I hope the parents keep feeding it.

Here's Mary. She'll be leaving the day I come back to the island. I was showing her how to catch and band tropicbirds under the warehouse building. She's obviously enjoying it so far.

New Volunteers

After a couple of days delay, our last set of volunteers got out of here on Friday. They were a couple of days late (another little airplane glitch), but got out ok. Brie, Kelli, Kevin, and Sarah left, and Cindy, Jim, and Mary showed up. These 3 will be a little busier since they'll be doing the work of the last 4. Jim & Cindy have volunteered on Midway counting birds for a few years and I met them there originally, so it's good to see some familiar faces. With a lot of people, we didn't get much food on the plane. At least the Kahana is coming next month with our big resupply. I'll be off island for training and vacation the first week in March, so be ready for a little break from me. I'll give you a few more details next time.

There wasn't much newsworthy going on this week, except for new volunteers. So I'll just show you some of the colorful birds hanging around. I'll show you the different boobies on the island right now (you can keep the jokes to yourself, since they are probably not that original). It's only bird pictures this time, since there's so many. Next time I'll give you some non-birds.

The male red-footed boobies get colorful bills at breeding time.

This is a male & female that found a good nest site.

One red-footed booby chick hatched a couple weeks ago. These aren't like most of the other seabirds here that are born fluffy and cute.

This is a dark morph of a red-footed booby. They are gray, but breed with the normal colored ones. There are only about 10 of these or so on the island.

Here's a masked booby sitting on the ground. They are always on the ground, while the red-foots are always in the bushes or on walls.

This is the Nazca booby that I showed you before. It has been here twice, but nests in the eastern Pacific. It's not here now. This one has an orange bill instead of a yellow one.

Here's another eastern Pacific visitor with a red-footed booby. It's an Eastern Pacific brown booby (aka, Brewster's brown booby). It is considered a subspecies of brown booby, but will hybridize with the regular ones. We only see it every few days, and it's usually at LaPerouse Pinnacle instead of here I think.

This is one of our normal brown boobies that live here.

Whales

This is the last week of this group of volunteers. They've been here for about 4 months and will fly out on Wed., if there are no plane troubles. We're losing 4 volunteers and getting 3, so it will be a little busier around here until a couple more show up on the Kahana in March. I've only got a few weeks left before I go off island for training and vacation too.

We got out for a boat trip on Friday, now that we've had a few days of good weather. We saw a few humpback whales on our way to and from LaPerouse Pinnacle. They were pretty far away, but we could see their spouts, fins, and backs every now and then. I didn't want to disturb them, so we just watched them from afar (too far for pictures with my little camera). We could hear them singing when we jumped in the water at LaPerouse to snorkel.

Here's some nice table coral out by LaPerouse Pinnacle.

I saw a big green sea turtle while snorkeling today.

These are bluefin trevally. They can get up to about 25 pounds and like to follow people around while they snorkel. I don't know if they're just curious or think we'll scare up some food for them.

Brie and Kelly are putting temporary bands on the albatross chicks. They are starting to wander away from their nests a little, so we want to know which chick came from which nest in the plots that we monitor.

This frigatebird got hit by the plane propeller a few weeks ago. It looks almost like it got chopped in half, but I think only the tail feathers got knocked off. It flies around fine, but might be a little less maneuverable. You can look at my older posts for what a full tailed bird looks like (the one back in Nov. shows the tails nicely).

More Birds

There are even more birds here this week. The sooty terns are landing in the afternoons and evenings, and making a lot of noise. We have a plane next week for a volunteer changeout, so I hope the birds don't stay on the runway until after that.

The weather was finally nice enough to get out and make sure everything was good on the other islands. We did a marine debris pickup on East island and brought back a full boat load of bottles, floats, shoes, toothbrushes, lighters, and various other plastic things. I probably should have taken a picture. I'll get one next time. There's no shortage of trash to pick up over there. We also stopped by La Perouse pinnacle and tried to do some snorkeling. The swells were pretty big so the visibility wasn't very good. We didn't stay long. But it was nice to get out and look around the atoll.

The sooty terns are crowding onto the runway.

This isn't the place to come if you don't like birds.

The albatross chicks are starting to be left on their own.

Here's a vagrant bird that showed up recently. It's a Glaucous-winged gull in it's first winter plumage. I hope it does better than the ducks do when they accidentally fly here.

I've been taking a lot of frigatebird pictures lately, since they are pretty interesting right now. This male (on the shrub) is displaying for the female, who checked him out for a couple of seconds, but I guess she thought she could do better and flew off.

Here's another picture of the facilities. This is our "library", also where we eat meals. We've got a lot of pretty random books here that people have left. It's similar to Midway's library, where you have to make sure the bookworms/termites haven't started reading them first.

Good Week

This week went pretty smoothly. We did a lot of bird and nest counting and marking. We're still enjoying our new shipment of fresh vegetables. The weather has been a little windy and the ocean too rough to get out to the other islands recently, but we hope to get out to make sure everything is ok on the rest of the atoll as soon as we can. So this week was a good week for enjoying the fresh air and ocean view.

I thought I had posted a picture of actually landing on Tern island. Apparently I didn't. You can see a part of the pilots helment in case a bird comes through the windsheild.

The sooty terns are coming back by the thousands. There are big clouds of them above the island, and they are getting really loud. You can see why the pilots wear helmets.

A gray-backed tern is sitting on a rock. There's only a few of these around. They look the same as the sooty terns except what's gray on this bird is black on a sooty tern.

MMMM, fish and squid oil! This is a common sight around the island.

The frigatebirds are almost always puffed up now so they add a lot of color to the island.

This is what the kitchen looks like. This was a spaghetti night.

Another Interesting Week

We had a pretty interesting week for Tern island. Biologically, we got done with our fourth and final albatross sweep where every nest is checked to see if birds are banded or not. On Monday, the first Laysan albatross chick hatched. They are starting to pop out everywhere now. The Sooty terns are flying over the island by the thousands, and every day more show up to fly around. They don't land, for the moment, but one of these days they'll all decide it's time to sit and pick nesting spots.

A few days ago we had a visit from a helicopter. It must have been military from a ship since we are kind of out of range for anyone else. They just flew around the atoll for an hour or so, then went back where they came from. I guess they just wanted to check out the atoll.

We also had a supply plane come in on Saturday. They meant to turn right around and head back to Honolulu, but they blew a tire from having to brake so fast on our short, bird-filled runway. So they got to stay the night, and we were happy to have them since they brought us mail and fresh food which we hadn't got since Dec. 4. We've been having a lot of canned stuff lately. Today, another plane flew in with some new wheels and a mechanic to change them. The pilot was Bob Justman, who flew here for many years. Today was his 663rd flight out here. He was pretty good at dodging the birds.

My big project for tomorrow is fixing the kitchen/common room lights. It was kind of cool making dinner by kerosene lantern light, but I think I'd rather have a little better light so I can at least get most of the ants and fruit flies out of my food.

Here's the first Laysan albatross chick.

This is the unknown helicopter flying off into the sunset.

This doesn't roll so well anymore.

Bob J. was showing us a picture similar to this from a few years ago, except his plane was the one with the flat.

This picture was from last week. Kelly is taking the turtle out of the net so we can put it back over the seawall. This isn't the same turtle as in my last week's post. This one is a little bit bigger, but it was in the same spot.

Albatrosses are Hatching

Another busy week on Tern Island, of course it always is. The black-footed albatross chicks started hatching last Monday, which was a little earlier than expected. There aren't too many yet and the weather has been cool (high 60's, low 70's) and windy, so the parents aren't getting up to let us see exactly how many are hatching. The Laysan albatrosses are starting to poke holes in their eggs (pip), but aren't out yet.

The plane to Midway flew over today, so I got to chat with a couple of people on their way to Midway, like Matt (Midway Manager), Susan (Monument Supervisor), and Robyn (Regional Director). I don't know why, but for some reason that's more fun than chatting on the phone, even though it's hard to hear and we don't say much. We can't see the plane from down here because it's too small and high, but they can see us. I posted a picture of Tern from that plane on my Midway blog back in Sept. '07.

We ran out of fresh vegetables a few weeks ago, but we're expecting a plane this week with supplies and mail. The next plane after that is a month from now, so we should be able to almost make it until then.

This chick is right by the front door, so it will be easy to keep an eye on. The parent is shading it from the direct sun and talking to it so the chick knows it's voice when it comes back to feed it (I may anthropomorphize a little, but it's better than using technical terms).

We've had to rescue a couple of green sea turtles from behind the seawall this week. I found this turtle today in a pool and had to catch it and put it back out over the seawall. I had my underwater camera so I snapped a picture of it in the pool before I caught it. It was about 14" across. You can see a picture of where they get stuck on the Dec. 14 post.

The red-tailed tropicbirds are coming back. Last month we'd only see one here or there, but now there are about 100 flying around squawking in the afternoons.

A couple of endangered monk seals are sleeping on the beach while a Laysan albatross flies over.

There are a whole lot of these little black noddy chicks around now. This one is a neighbor in the same bush as the one from last week.

I haven't shown you many pictures of the facilities around here, so since I talked about getting food on the plane, I'll show you our food storage room. You can see we aren't in any danger of starving, even without this plane.

More Rain

It's kind of been a weird week, weather wise. It's been either really nice or really bad. Not much in between. Yesterday, I spent the entire morning mopping up water that leaked through the roof and windows. We've had a few beautiful sunny days too. At least we weren't shoveling snow like some of you are doing.

There are a lot of chicks hatching right now. One red-tailed tropicbird has a chick, one white tern has a chick, and there are a lot of black noddy chicks hatching today. The black-footed albatross are about a week away from hatching and the Laysan albatrosses, about 2 or 3 weeks yet.

The nights have been beautiful for the most part too. The moon has been so bright, it's almost like daylight. I've got a couple pictures for you.

Here's the white tern parent hovering by its chick.

This black noddy chick is still hatching. It's back half is still in the shell. I couldn't get a good picture of that though.

This is the view from the roof a few nights ago just before midnight. I took a 30 second exposure, so it wasn't really this bright. The bright "star" in the sky is Venus.

This is looking north from the island. This picture looks really nice at full resolution, but that's too big to upload. If your screen has decent resolution, you can see the stars. This was another 30 second exposure. There was a turtle swimming around at the bottom of the picture, but since it's dark and moving, you can't tell at all.

Happy 2009

The volunteers had another busy week with the birds. Every week they either have to read the band on every albatross on an egg. They switch weeks to do Black-footed one week and Laysans the next. It usually takes them about 3 or 4 full days to get that done. While they do that I usually take care of the admin stuff, learn some more about this place, inventory everything on the island, and fix whatever broke recently or needs fixing. This week it was water filters, the warehouse wall, the boats, covering a large pipe so no one falls in, and a some other random jobs.

Since we're out of the holiday season now and are going to be back to 6 days a week, we should be able to do quite a bit more around here. We got out snorkeling on New Year's Day, so that was nice. The current was really fast near the island though, so we really couldn't stop to look at things, but I got a couple of pictures. The white-tip sharks were there as usual. The girls counted 6 of them at once. I couldn't really count them becuase I couldn't tell if I was seeing new ones or the same 2 every time. At least we don't have to do counts of all the fish around here.

Here's a snorkel pic at sunset with some water drops on the lens.

This is an old Jeep that the Coast Guard (or the Navy????) dumped in the water when they were done with it

This black-footed albatross got a net caught on it. It probably had fish eggs attached to it, which these birds love. A few snips with the scissors took care of it, but the net had worn into the skin a little and was blocking it's throat a little too. It's doing fine now.

I haven't shown you a white tern since my Midway blog, so here's one.

I thought at first that the bird in back was a white tern, but it's actually a brown noddy that's almost albino. It's bill and eyes are dark though. It was born a couple of months ago so its about the same age as the bird in front. We never see albino or almost albino adults of any birds around here. We think that them being in the sun all the time does them in.

The male great frigatebirds are starting to practice attracting the females. They aren't quite ready to nest yet though.